It wasn’t ‘They,’ the Democrats

During Sunday’s four-hour memorial service for conservative activist Charlie Kirk, what should have been time spent eulogizing the man – loving words spoken by his family and friends -- instead turned into a political rally, meant, intentionally or not, to demonize Democrats.

Since I have friends who are Democrats, both elected, unelected, all decent people or I wouldn’t count them as friends, I take issue with the likes of Stephen Miller, for example, President Trump’s deputy chief of staff for policy and his homeland security advisor.

During Sunday’s memorial service, Miller had this to say, while addressing the “forces of wickedness and evil,” as he describes what was behind Kirk’s political assassination Sept. 10:

“You have nothing. You are nothing. You are wickedness, you are jealousy, you are envy, you are hatred. You are nothing. You can build nothing. You can produce nothing. You can create nothing. We are the ones who build. We are the ones who create. We are the ones who lift up humanity.”

Funny, coming from a guy who has done nothing in his life but swim in the political pool, so to speak. No work in the private sector.

Springsteen vs. Miller

I was thinking about Stephen Miller’s comments – “You can create nothing” -- while listening to Bruce Springsteen’s channel on Sirius Radio, channel 20, E Street Radio.

First saw the New Jersey phenom in concert in 1975, shortly after his release of Born to Run. It was six days short of my 20th birthday, and up to that time, it was the greatest concert I’d ever seen in a relatively small indoor venue. His fame was just beginning to spread. Unlike every other musician I had seen before or since, Springsteen just didn’t sing and play guitar on stage. Instead, he lived out his songs, like an actor with a guitar and a microphone. A generational talent.

His previous LP – “The Wild, The Innocent & the E-Street Shuffle” – was already a hit with music lovers but hadn’t yet made him a commercial success.

In fact, it was so good, I kept listening to the 8-track over and over and over again. There had never been any music like what Springsteen was writing and producing.

“Rosalita, jump a little higher…” Fifty years later, Bruce is still rocking, even though he turned 76 this week (Tuesday).

Springsteen is a critic of Trump, MAGA, but has produced some of the greatest rock songs, ballads written in modern times, in my opinion.

So, when I hear Trump’s mouthpiece, Stephen Miller, say, about Democrats in general, that “You can produce nothing, you can create nothing..” I have to laugh at the irony.

What have you produced, Steve? Nothing but hate. Hate, on top of more hate, on top of more division, vitriol. That’s what you’ve brought to the table.

And we wonder why the country is so divided.

To be fair, some on the Far Left are just as crazy.

Whack jobs to my right, whack jobs to my left, where do the sane people hang out?

“On Sirius Radio’s E Street Channel.”

Thanks. For example, in Chicago this weekend at an event called Riot Festival, a heavy metal band, Gwar, staged a mock beheading of Elon Musk. Band members were dressed up as ogres carrying swords, while one used a chainsaw to cut off the Musk mannequin’s head, before fake blood squirted out and showered the crowd, who lit up with laughter and applause. (Source: Daily Star.)

Sick people, but, hey, what’s new these days?

Like I said, crazies on the Far Left and the Far Right.

Not everyone in the crowd, however, was deranged.

“That’s not edgy, it’s grotesque and reckless and normalizes violence against a real person. This is not okay. Riot Fest and GWAR crossed a major line,” one X user wrote, reposting the video.

Amen. At the same venue, GWAR also “murdered” a figure representing President Trump. (Source: NY Post.)

One Guy Killed Clark

To help further divide America, Stephen Miller had this to say Sunday to an overflowing crowd, both in person and on TV:

“You have no idea the dragon you have awakened, as the MAGA movement will strive to save this civilization, to save the West, to save this republic, because our children are strong, and our grandchildren will be strong, and our children’s children’s children will be strong. And what will you leave behind? Nothing, nothing.”

Who is he talking to? The Democrats. Anyone who isn’t MAGA. Even the Republicans who have stepped away from MAGA are now considered the “enemy.”

Just do an online search for “Former elected Republicans now enemies of MAGA.”

Mitt Romney, Jeff Flake, Paul Ryan, Mike Pence are only a few. They have stepped away from MAGA and now constitute the “enemy.”

Some real crazy….but there you go.

The insane part about all of this is that one guy, one guy, killed Charlie Kirk (allegedly). The evidence is pretty clear that he acted alone.

His motive? He was in an intimate relationship with a transgender guy and apparently took exception to what Kirk was saying about gays and the trans community in general.

I don’t want to disparage the dead, but one’s political rhetoric lasts long past their passing, and I think it’s what motivated Kirk’s alleged killer, 22-year-old Tyler Robinson, who was brought up in a conservative Utahbased family who voted for Trump.

For example, during a 2023 speech posted by Right Wing Watch, Kirk said this about the transgender issue:

“One issue I think that is so against our senses, so against the natural law and dare I say a throbbing middle finger to God, is the transgender thing happening in America right now.” (Source: The Advocate and multiple other news sites.)

In that same speech, Kirk cited a Bible verse which said that a woman who puts on men’s clothes, or a man who puts on a woman’s garment, is an “abomination.”

So, to close out yet another editorial that took too many words to write, no, Stephen Miller and so many others like you, this is not a good-vs.- evil war. It’s not a war about “Us’ vs. “Them.”

It’s a war against “hate.” Pure and simple, no matter its source.

That is the true evil in this country.

There is also this war against free speech.

The GOP used to speak in favor of it, but now it seems to oppose it unless it says something nice about the president.

Consider this quote attributed to the famous Philosopher Voltaire, but was actually written by a woman, Evelyn Beatric Hall in 1906, as she wrote a piece in an attempt to summarize Voltaire’s outlook on life: “I may not agree with what you have to say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.”

That, Stephen Miller and so many others like you, should be the message being spread across the U.S.

Instead, you want to turn this into some “holy war,” that includes “us” vs. “them.”

A very dangerous path to follow, for us all, both Republican and Democrat.

By the way, last but not least, last time I checked, Jesus wasn’t into politics.